MORE GOVERNMENT WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY

You learn a lot about members of Congress from the bills they introduce. The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) tells us a lot about Illinois Senator Richard Durbin. Durbin loves big government. Quick to condemn entire sectors of the American economy based on a few rotten apples, he rarely criticizes big government for doing too much regulating because he believes to his core that government is doing too little of it. You will not hear Durbin complaining that government power must be carefully checked to prevent abuse and to stem violations of civil or economic liberties. Indeed, if he believes in economic liberty at all, it is a well kept secret.

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act adds power to FDA precisely at a time when the agency is discredited by Inspector General reports, by private assessments of its performance, and by judicial decisions against the agency. Its abuses are legion, including approval of unsafe drugs against its own medical reviewers’ objections; failure to remove unsafe drugs from the market for decades, if at all; failure to abide by federal court orders; censorship of nutrient-disease information that could save lives, and on and on. Before you would ever want to give a government agency so abusive of the public trust more power, you would want to be sure that you gutted it of the power it so abusively wields and put in place safeguards against future abuses of power.

Although Durbin knows of these abuses, he does nothing to end them. Instead, he just keeps on giving FDA more and more power—a bit like the best friend of a drunken sailor.